December 21, 2008
Mindfulness meditation - be there then
My friend Dave had a book on his shelf, 8 Minute Meditation. I couldn't help but pick it up. After all the author says meditation can take 8 minutes and I say it can be "instant," so let's see what he's got 
The short form is that the book offers basic Buddhist meditation instruction, without much of the Buddhist theory. That's fine.
But the book also has one basic philosophical point, a point which translates to the instruction:
Accept whatever is happening
We hear a teaching like that and we can almost instantly remember times where we felt accepting of what was happening while simultaneously remembering times we were less accepting of a similar situation and having a less-than-pleasant experience.
It seems obvious to extrapolate and conclude that the key to happiness is to accept whatever is happening. And if meditation is a way to practice that, well then we do the math and get:
Meditation allows you to practice accepting what is happening … which leads to being able to do that in your daily life at any moment… which leads to a happy life all the time! BINGO!
There's only one problem.
Nobody has ever accepted what is happening.
Ever.
Nobody.
Here's why:
It takes time for any experience to reach conscious awareness, even thoughts. Want to see this in action, watch the show Time Warp where they show various actions in super-slo-mo. They've had many episodes where they've timed the gap between an experience — say, getting your legs waxed — and the reaction to the event. Minimum? About 1/10 of a second. More typical? About 1/2 a second.
For the last 40 years or so, researchers have shown that it takes .4-.5 seconds until we become aware of any sensation. They've noticed that the thoughts we're consciously aware of begin 1/2 second before we notice them.
Why we don't experience a big gap in time, and why we can catch baseballs rather than having them hit us in the head before we put up our mitt is still an enigma. Some say that "consciousness" is the process that links the post-processed event (the thing that takes 1/2 a second) to the initial event in a way that gives us the illusion of immediacy.
Be that as it may, the more important point is:
We can't accept what "is happening" because the thing we think we need to accept ALREADY HAPPENED. We've never experienced something "happening," only "happened."
Try it out for yourself: Toss some thought into your mind, like tossing a pebble into a lake. How 'bout "blue boat." And as you toss the thought into your mind, notice that as you become aware of the blue boat you're considering, it's as if you got to the party a tiny bit late. The thought started and then you showed up. Or maybe you can sense that the thought is already changing or fading or leaving by the time you're aware of it.
We can't "Be here now" because we're "always there then."
Whattya' notice?
Comments on Mindfulness meditation - be there then »
Consequently, anything you are aware of doing has already happened. That makes conscious thought kind of an echo chamber and not the director of one's own actions.
I'm confused. I think I'll go meditate.
Although the question of what constitutes 'now' is fascinating to contemplate, you seem to be positing this as a response to "accept what is happening."
I don't get what you're saying about that.
Doesn't Byron Katie (whom you have publically praised) say something very similar?
Personally, I have my own problem with it. It's like giving someone the instruction "be enlightened."
There's so much 'how to' involved, it's almost not worth saying.
Ric,
You don't sound confused at all… calling "conscious thought kind of an echo chamber" is in line with what most cognitive psychologists have been saying for years. What it sounds like is that contemplating the possibility that the facts contradict our experience is making your head hurt
Read "The User Illusion" for a great intro to the research about this topic.
Ron,
What I'm saying is that if what we experience is after the fact, then we're not experiencing things "now," and therefore it's tricky to "accept what's happening now" let alone to "live in the present."
I totally agree that saying "be in the now" is like saying "be enlightened," or, for that matter, "be purple!" A useless instruction that can't be followed…
I'm not sure if Katie says something similar. Nor am I sure that I've "publicly praised" her.
Regardless, this line of inquiry is inspired by my cog-psy research and reading… there are quite a few people talking about it (it was a cover story in US News & World Report about 2 or 3 Summers ago).
Yes, the "I" illusion is a real monster.
I was wondering what use an echo chamber would be, say if we were designing a personality from the ground up.
There's Benjamin Libet's "veto", which suggests a kind of quality control module for consciousness. That might explain obsessive thought patterns, but then, being lost in thought seems to defeat that purpose.
A personal diarist? Sports commentator? A novelist? There's the "story", the purpose of which is what? To create a coherent algorithm of sensory data and motor activity as an aid to perceptual priming, a preparation for activity far downstream of simple stimulus-response algorithms? Complexity reduction? This is a job for Chaos Theory!
You can see how fast this kind of thinking gets out of hand.
One problem, from the Buddhist perspective, is the relentless proliferation of thinking, a solution being to simply echo whatever appears to the senses insofar as that proliferation is a source of misery.
This kind of makes sense to me, in both theory and practice. Just turn down the echo from stadium to small room. Just enough to highlight experience, give it more depth rather than create a dissonant confusion by the long separation of contrasting echoes multiplying in time and space.
Which suggests i should stop writing now. (Thanks for the book suggestion.)
Hi - I got 8 Minute Meditation for the CD, but didn't like the sound of the teacher's voice, or the information. I found your site via putting this phrase into the search engine: "I hate meditation can I still become enlightened" I like a lot of your topics but am disappointed that you teach meditation. I was hoping to hear that it's unnecessary - now that would be a new - and by me, very welcome - teaching!
Hi Mary Ann…
That's HYSTERICAL how you found this site. BTW, from what I could tell, 8-Minute Meditation was nothing new other than the idea that you should only practice for 8 minutes a day. Otherwise it was Buddhist Meditation 101.
While I *do* teach meditation, I DON'T suggest that meditation has *anything* to do with enlightenment.
You'll find in a couple of posts on this blog that IF there is a thing called enlightenment (that's another conversation for another time… but one that's happening on this blog), it is COMPLETELY non-causal.
That is, there is no thing you can do to guarantee it. And certainly, therefore, meditation CANNOT be a requirement.
People ask me, "Why do you teach meditation?" And my answer is: "Because it's something I enjoy doing (and because I've developed techniques that are unusual and effective and simple and fun)." But I *definitely* don't do it with the idea that meditation (mine or anyone else's) will make you enlightened, allow you to make a better cup of coffee, or be able to tie your shoes without using your hands.
BTW, you'll probably enjoy this post: http://www.meditationtruth.com/ill-know-im-fully-enlightened-when/
Who are you? I mean that superficially, not like in "Who hears?"
I couldn't find any information on who is behind this site — doesn't mean it's not there.
Hi, Stephen…
LOL (literally, I did). I would have answered colloquially rather than "spiritually", but I love that you had to make the distinction.
I just added a line to the "About Us" page at http://www.meditationtruth.com/about/ with the answer to your question, which is: Boulder, Colorado (a town where you can't throw a tantrum without hitting a therapist).